Royalties from timber do not have much development impact on Ghana. This is because there are no guidelines to provide the needed framework for district assemblies to use timber royalties (¹). A survey of how 14 districts and municipal assemblies use timber royalties, commissioned by Civic Response in 2016, shows a wide variation in how district assemblies use royalties from timber. While six of the sampled districts use royalties to support social infrastructure, such as schools, school furniture, and road works, the larger proportion of assemblies see and use such income as windfalls for general purposes or to cover their recurrent expenses.